croissantking's conquests

[zigzagjoe]

Not impossible but definitely fiddly. I did this to a 68882 with a lead borrowed from a vintage metal cap. I suspect there are better sources for pins, though. Maybe SMD PGA pins exist?

 

[croissantking]

I've just completed a battery rebuild for my iBook 300 - it's taken a full charge and seems to work great.

 

[jmacz]

Were they pre built or did you solder/weld the tabs yourself? Nice!

 

[croissantking]

Were they pre built or did you solder/weld the tabs yourself? Nice!

The cells were purchased loose and untabbed, and I assembled it using a spot welder.

 

[CC_333]

I wish you were ~5,000 miles closer, because I have maybe a half dozen or so of these that could be rebuilt.

c

 

[croissantking]

I wish you were ~5,000 miles closer, because I have maybe a half dozen or so of these that could be rebuilt.

It’s well worth the effort, I’m getting 3-4 hours’ usage out of my rebuilt one. Running untethered increases the enjoyment of these old laptops significantly.

 

[crazyben]

It's more than it opens the door for a load of projects. The 840av was planned for release with a bootable 7.1.2 in ROM, you could add this back in some day. You could also potentially do in computer ROM development with one of the new Quadra compatible ROMs.

Checking the date code, it is an Aug 1992, so not a release day machine, but interesting.

They're quite hard work - even recapping is fiddly. Take more care than usual. There is a lot of plastic near caps and hard to reach capacitors.

If you find a source of replacement DSPs, let me know before you order, I could probably do with one too. My dad's is battery bombed and it attacked the DSP a little.

I have one that is recapped and works great. How rare are these?

 

[croissantking]

I received another 540c today, purchased on eBay in its original box (unfortunately not in great condition). It came with some correspondence too, which I thought I’d share as it’s interesting.

The machine boots up and has a good LCD - but only has 12MB RAM, and no other upgrades. I feel like second hand machines in the UK usually don’t come with the kind of nice surprises that they might if they were purchased in the USA or Japan. Maybe the Brits are more frugal…

 

[Snial]

I received another 540c today, purchased on eBay in its original box (unfortunately not in great condition). It came with some correspondence too, which I thought I’d share as it’s interesting.

The machine boots up and has a good LCD - but only has 12MB RAM, and no other upgrades. I feel like second hand machines in the UK usually don’t come with the kind of nice surprises that they might if they were purchased in the USA or Japan. Maybe the Brits are more frugal…

In the late 90s Brits had a lower income; $1=£1 and keen memories of doing everything on a 1K ZX81 ;-) !

 

[croissantking]

Yup. But reading the paperwork, it seems the original owner wasn’t very happy with the reliability of this machine, so perhaps replaced it sooner rather than later.

 

[croissantking]

My newly acquired 540c (right) has a much brighter, whiter screen, which on its own has made this a worthy purchase. I get the impression it’s had low usage.

 

[finkmac]

isn't the yellow tone just an old worn CCFL backlight? Presumably you could replace that with an LED backlight...

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

It can be caused by the CCFL backlight, but sometimes it's the LCD itself. One or more of the layers, I believe it's the backlight diffuser layer can go yellow, so sometimes replacing the backlight won't make an LCD much less yellow.

 

[croissantking]

It can be caused by the CCFL backlight, but sometimes it's the LCD itself. One or more of the layers, I believe it's the backlight diffuser layer can go yellow, so sometimes replacing the backlight won't make an LCD much less yellow.

That’s good to know. I do want to fit an LCD backlight to my PB180, which is very dim.